Après toutes ces elles/After All this Else: ‘New’ French Feminisms Translated to the British Scene

Abstract

This chapter is a consideration of the impact on British theatre and performance of what in the 1980s and early 1990s was often termed ‘New French Feminisms’. This is an enormous topic for a short essay so Carl and Clare, the editors of this volume, have encouraged me to take something of an autobiographical approach. This means that this account is largely written from the perspective of British feminist theatre criticism…but not entirely — since in this area above all, ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ (should in theory) be as inseparable as the layers of a mille feuille.

So: this history cannot be written; it would have to be collective, multiple; it would be of contradictions. But still […] I’ll have a go, prefacing everything with the reminder of what I say has no authority but that of my own authorship. (Wardjouve, 1991: 66)